


How To Dehumanize A Person in Five Easy Steps

by mXrtis



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, oh man my first fanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 08:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2302943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mXrtis/pseuds/mXrtis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short story in second person about Bucky's time at HYDRA. It's not nearly as lighthearted as the title suggests.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How To Dehumanize A Person in Five Easy Steps

Step 1:

You wake up with a memory of falling still fresh in your mind. You are in a room that smells heavily of antiseptic, and you can't quite move yet. It feels like your veins are filled with lead and there are people around you muttering. Your mind is foggy and you strain to understand what they're saying.

Your eyes are open but blurry and you hear whispers of, 'it's waking up'. You remember a bridge, something cold. Maybe snow, or maybe the sterile metal of a scalpel. Outside of that is nothing. The voices have accents, though you don't know what they are. Your eyes begin to clear and you see a couple of knives on the table to the left of you, you still can't move.

(I must've been sedated)

You think you know how to use a knife, but these don't look like any you recognize. You scan the room using your periphery, there are four people in the room. All are wearing masks. One has a small saw in their hand. Your eyes drift over the room, taking everything in. Next you begin to inventory yourself. Nothing hurts, you aren't bleeding, but you've been restrained by leather straps on the sides of the table. Everything seems as okay as it can in this situation until you realize no one is using a scalpel on you. Instead, it's the frozen surface of the metal _thing_ that's taken the place of your left arm. Your breath chokes in your throat and you try to lash out with this unrestrained metal arm, but it betrays you. It weighs you down. You remain frozen.

Someone enters the room. This man is not wearing a medical mask and smells of alcohol. He stops in front of your feet at the end of the hospital bed and looks you up and down with hard eyes.

"What is it?" he asks.

The doctor with the saw pulls his mask down and replies, "It's our new weapon. Code name: Winter Soldier."

Step 2:

You wake up cold and alone with a feeling that you've done this a thousand times before. A man --

(I remember his smell)

\-- stands in front of you with another to the side holding a clipboard.

"Well, sir, it's made considerable progress... but, we're still having problems with the--" all the word blur together. Glass separates you from the two men talking and a machine that was once just humming emits a loud beep.

The man that smells like... like... (you can't remember) presses a button on a device and into it he mutters, "The thaw is complete. Training can commence."

The case that you are in opens and you let yourself be led to another room. This one is filled with weapons, the man with the clipboard instructs you to pick one. You stand confused for a second. They begin to argue.

"Well, what did you expect? It's a weapon. It can't choose. It can't even think. All it needs to do is store information and play it back as we need it. It's no different than a computer."

"I, uh, just forgot, well, that it can't do those kinds of things."

The man hands you a gun. He looks frightened, you think, but you're not sure. All of the others' emotions seem to blend together nowadays. There is a door at the back of the room, you remember that too. The official looking man who you think you remember opens it. Inside is another human, this one is definitely scared. You stare straight ahead, over top of the crouched figure.

"Go ahead. Kill her."

Something tugs inside you, but you cock the pistol anyways and point it at her head. The second man drops his clipboard and pushes the gun away from her head. The first man points his own pistol and shoots her point blank. Blood splatters on you, but you don't react to it.

The first man smooths his jacket down and sighs, "It hesitated. Now we're going to have to get another one and try again."

Step 3:

Things are starting to blur together, gunshots and falling and ice, and these smeared memories do not fit in you. Only all of your training remains fresh in your mind. You know you have to store it and play it back for them. You are a machine and machines do not remember. When they come for you, they take you to a room. It always seems familiar, you are handed a knife and led into another room. A human waits there for you. You must kill them. You do kill them. You are lightening fast and their throat is slit before they even realize it. The blood that sprays from their jugular is warm, much warmer than you think your body is.

(of course it is, I am not like them. I am a weapon. I am the Winter Soldier)

There is a man there, scribbling notes something onto paper. You think 'hesitate' was a word you once knew, and there was a time when it was always used venomously. These thoughts are only triggered by remarks of, "It does not hesitate."

You think that the man holding the clipboard is feeling prideful; that doesn't make sense to you, who would feel pride for a thing fulfilling its purpose.

Step 4:

You are led down a long hallway to a room that is filled with humans sitting around a table. They are talking, but you only recognize a few of their words. 'Targets', 'eliminate', 'weapon', are all you know the meaning of. They stop talking and turn their eyes to you. Some look uneasy, you stare straight ahead.

"Are you sure it's ready?"

"Yes. Do you wish to see the data regarding it's abilities?"

"Not today, just get it to understand what it needs to do and send it out."

They hand you a file with a picture of a man clipped onto it. Physically he means nothing to you and though they use long strings of sentences to describe what his importance is, all you file away is that you need to kill him. You also store his location in the back of your mind, figuring that may be important. You go to a room filled with weapons and upon scanning the room, you find a door in the back of it. You are given two pistols, a set of knives, and a third longer gun that is slung over your back. The tall man and the man with the clipboard lead you to a vehicle, you ride in it for some time and are let out in the woods. The vehicle drives off and you are alone.

You do not think about running, you simply track the man and shoot him with the longest gun. You use a silencer but only because the man that gave you the file folder told you to.

"We don't want to draw attention to us _or_ it," he had said. You had realized that you were the 'it' a long time ago, but that realization still needed to drag itself up from the depths of your mind.

After killing the man, you returned to the place in the woods where they said they would come and get you. You wait and no one comes. Thoughts begin to surface in your head. Thoughts about another man, who's name you knew, a train and a bridge and... and... and you are beginning to feel sick. This is not what goes on in a machine's head. You think you feel afraid, though you don't know how that's possible. Headlights shine into your eyes and you don't look away. You get into the vehicle and drive back to the place you came from in unnerving silence.

Step 5:

You are taken to a room where many men sit, they talk about something, but something tells you that this doesn't matter. You soon find that the only thing that matters is the file that they give you. It contains a picture of a blonde man and a city, New York. You are prepped in a room filled with weapons and then sent out.

You know that you must kill this man, but still something slight tugs at you from deep inside you and a word drifts into your mind, 'hesitation'.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I finally put my account to use and stopped being so afraid to post.


End file.
